1. Field of the Invention
An aspect of this disclosure relates to a wireless communication system, a wireless communication method, and a wireless terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless networks are being used to connect various electronic information devices. For example, a personal computer (PC) may be connected via wireless communications to a projector so that an image from the PC can be displayed on a large display such as an electronic information board.
To enable terminals to communicate with each other via a wireless network, it is necessary to correctly configure the terminals for the wireless network. However, configuring a terminal for a wireless network involves setting various wireless network parameters (or wireless communication parameters) such as an IP address, a subnet mask, an authentication method, an encryption method, and an encryption key corresponding to the encryption method. Accordingly, correctly setting such wireless network parameters is difficult for a user who is unfamiliar with wireless network technologies. Here, there exist technologies that make it possible to set wireless network parameters automatically or through simple operations.
For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-254301 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2011-188238 disclose a wireless terminal and a wireless communication system that make it possible to set wireless network parameters automatically or through simple operations. In the related-art wireless communication system, the wireless terminal generates a service set identifier (SSID) including a wireless LAN (local area network) IPv4 address and a terminal identifier (e.g., the name of the wireless terminal) of the wireless terminal, and transmits a radio beacon including the SSID.
Thus, according to the related-art technology for automatically or easily setting wireless network parameters, the IP address of the wireless terminal is included in the SSID in a radio beacon. For this reason, the related-art technology is not applicable to a wireless terminal that supports a wireless communication protocol other than the Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4).
This problem is described in more detail below. A “connected” wireless terminal (that is to be connected to a “connecting” wireless terminal that requests a connection to the “connected” wireless terminal) transmits a radio signal called a “beacon” at predetermined intervals to advertise its existence. The beacon includes an SSID with a length of 32 bytes, which is used to identify a wireless network. According to the related-art technology, the SSID includes fields for a wireless LAN IPv4 address and a terminal identifier of the “connected” wireless terminal to notify wireless network parameters to a communication counterpart (the “connecting” wireless terminal). The “connecting” wireless terminal obtains the IP address of the “connected” wireless terminal from the SSID and communicates with the “connected” wireless terminal using the obtained IP address.
Generally, only ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters can be included in an SSID. Therefore, an IP address is converted into hexadecimal characters and assigned to 8 bytes of the SSID, and a terminal identifier is assigned to remaining 24 bytes of the SSID. Here, when the Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) is used as the wireless communication protocol, no information other than an IPv6 address, which requires 32 bytes (four times greater than an IPv4 address), can be included in the SSID.
For example, the technologies disclosed in JP2006-254301 and JP2011-188238 do not provide a method to include information other than an IPv6 address in the SSID and to set wireless network parameters automatically or through simple operations when IPv6 is employed as a wireless communication protocol.
Thus, with the related-art technologies, wireless communications cannot be performed when an address such as an IPv6 address with a large number of bits is used. Also with the related-art technologies, since it is necessary to exchange a large amount of wireless setting information, it takes time to establish wireless communications. Further, particularly in wireless communications, it often happens that communication packets fail to reach a counterpart communication terminal and a process of establishing a connection fails.